“A large group of protesters swarmed a Mobil gas station near 8 Mile and Southfield in Detroit,” wxyz.com reports. “They demanded to see surveillance video, also calling for a store clerk to be fired, after he pulled a toy gun on young boys last week.” That video remains unreleased. The cops say they’re investigating and the media report somehow neglects to mention that the protesters blockaded the gas station. Meanwhile, “The mother tells us her two sons, 14 and 11, were inside the store last Thursday, when the clerk accused the boys of stealing chips. Their family says the boys did not steal anything.” The unnamed clerk spoke to the media . . .

The clerk admitted to pointing a toy gun at the boys, trying to scare them.

The owner of the gas station fired the clerk Friday night, after protesters would not leave the store for hours.

The clerk says, “I did it for a reason I can’t explain. I’m sorry to the mother, the father, for everybody.”

Question: why can’t he explain it? More to the point, should the protesters have accepted the boys’ protestations of innocence at face value? Or should they have waited to see evidence or, I dunno, the official police report? While we’re at it, should the police have arrested the protestors for interfering with the gas station owner’s business?

I get that a bag of chips, the property of a store owner who would throw me under the bus in an instant, isn’t worth provoking all this drama and losing my clerk job over. It may well be a bonehead move in that context, but whose actual life was at risk of being lost? Where did the trade off, between chips and a life, risk taking place?

Of course they didn’t steal anything because they had a gun pointed at him Or pulled out them brandished towards them I wouldn’t steal anything either if I thought the clerk was going to shooting, but then again I don’t steal. Sounds like More propaganda for anti-gun rhetoric, with a slice of A civil rights organization getting involved. It appears that the race card was played once again.

Sorry but brandishing a gun, even a toy is a threat of lethal force. Even if the boys were stealing the whole display of chips his actions were not matched with the crime. 2 words for the clerk: Dumb @$$.

The relevant element isn’t whether the implement used was a real gun. Rather, it’s whether the offender used that implement to cause a reasonable apprehension on the victim’s part that the offender would and could use it to cause the victim serious injury.

A clerk pulling a toy gun on kids would very likely cause them to believe it was a real gun and that they were seriously being threatened, especially if they were actually guilty of shoplifting. I’m not saying that threatening serious injury is itself a reasonable response to shoplifting. However, those kids would have to expect some irate response from the clerk, if detected, which from their perspective might well include threat of serious injury. The adult clerk would know that and that’s why his actions may be criminal.

A bunch of neighborhood kids running around playing War, or Cops & Robbers, or Cowboys & Indians, etc. and threatening each other with toy guns isn’t at all a valid comparison. Those kids all know they haven’t done anything wrong, as they’re all just playing, and they all know it’s just a game among fellow kids.

Another couple of “didndoonuffins”. Clerk messed up by even working in an area like that in the first place. Let those crapholes collapse on themselves, since that’s the way people there seem to want it. They can have a good leftist “chocolate city” ala Ray Nagin’s Nawlins.

Maybe he does work in that area because he also lives in that area. Sooo…..let’s just back the point up one notch and declare that he shouldn’t be living there, necessitating his having to work there, in the first place.

As for commuting from the upper class environs, that’s cute. Or……he could relocate to some other equally poor, but not as crime infested, area and work there. There are plenty of places in America where hard working, proud but poor, people eke out an honest living in areas relatively free of criminal contagions.

Or are you of the belief that everyone poor, everywhere, is necessarily a criminal in search of an opportunity? How dare you?

The relevant point is whether the clerk’s threat caused a reasonable apprehension on the victim’s part that the threat was serious, not whether the threat was in fact serious.

For example, one could phone in a bomb threat purely as a hoax, with only words to convey the threat and no actual explosive device in existence. However, as long as the call receiver reasonably believed the threat was legitimate, then a crime has been committed. The fact that millions of other people also place phone calls every day and convey routine messages with spoken words, too, is irrelevant and does not constitute a crime on their part, because they have not caused in anyone else a reasonable apprehension of a threat.

Minors of any age can be mature beyond their age. We lay down a generic age of 18 as demarcation of majority, but even some technical adults are immature. While they normally don’t get to reverse time and claim immaturity as a legal defense, some mature minors are subject to fastforwarding of time and being tried as adults. Most are regarded as children, though.

That’s on a case by case basis, especially for a 14 year old, who’s apt to be regarded legally as a child, particularly in committing a childlike crime such as shoplifting a bag of chips. Even a more serious crime such as prostitution, is likely to find the offender legally regarded as a minor, and her adult client regarded as a pedophile sex offender.

It kind of reminds me of an old video game, ‘Police Quest 4.’ The protagonist, a detective, can pick up an apple at the Korean grocery store. If he tries to leave without paying the owner pulls a pistol on him. If he tries to leave again, BANG, game over.

If you pull a gun, there should be one explanation: I was in fear for my life (or someone else’s life). In most states, anything else is a crime. I did it for a reason I can’t explain just does not cut it, sorry. Worse, puts you in serious legal jeopardy.

Since it was a toy gun, this is a gray area. Did he point the gun at the kids? What did he say? Did he say anything? Did he just hold it next to his leg? Was it a (inappropriate) joke? Is this another victimhood microaggression? Oberlin Microaggression style? Not a simple matter here.

What is simple is the protesters broke the law. They came in and shut the place down. Loitering/trespassing.

When the owner called the police – why didn’t they respond? Were they giving “space to destroy?”

When I was that young, my mother would have trusted the testimony from the store clerk, ignored my claims of innocence regardless of how good the lie was, and grounded me for weeks. She may have even had me sweeping the gas station parking lot every weekend for months. Times have changed.

It’s funny how most of you assume the kids were stealing because they live in a black neighborhood, that’s the hate inside of you that most of you act like it doesn’t exist. I grew up in detroit and I’m black and I never stole anything out of a store or gas station before in my life, don’t assume…you make a..holes out of yourselves. The protestor didn’t have time to wait for a slow police department to try to come up with video evidence and they acted like concerned people in their community protecting the kids….pull a gun on our kids and can’t prove the kids did wrong, you not making anymore money here tonight buddy. I applaud the protestor and the parents and the kids for standing up for their right.
Black Man with a Gun.

can’t wait ’til some of this crap settles.
i’m forced to work turkey day afternoon and black friday night. we’re waiting for the west side to burn down for the third time after the latest video is released. there will be outages.
friday may not be a good mag mile shopping day.
and i still have to make rutabaga for mom. and cranberries.
black olives matter. jalapeno, blue cheese or pimento, martoonies always have green olives. that’s why i always order a gibson.

This is an exercise in civil protest.
While I do think the protestors should have waited for the police investigations,
I also think the protestors should have demanded to see a copy of the video
being recorded to show if the boys were steeling or not.

The clerk admitted to the brandishing (and that is illegal in itself) but
we don’t know if the boys were actually steeling.

Even though I think the protestors were wrong in not waiting, I do commend them
for not being violent and destroying property.
I think that does show a little restraint.